VMware · Early 2022 Enterprise SaaS · End-to-End UX

VMware Cloud on
AWS Outposts
Ordering Workflow

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Role
Product Design Lead
Employer
VMware
Scope
E2E Ordering & Deployment
Platform
VMware Cloud Services
Customer
Enterprise IT Operators
Delivery
GA Launch
01 — Context

A jointly engineered product with an untested ordering path

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts is a jointly engineered on-premises as-a-service offering, combining VMware’s enterprise SDDC software — vSphere, vSAN, NSX — with AWS’s I3EN bare-metal infrastructure. The hardware installs physically in a customer’s data center; management happens through VMware’s cloud portal.

The product gave enterprise IT organizations what they’d been asking for: keep workloads on-prem for data sovereignty and latency reasons, access native AWS services, and offload infrastructure management entirely.

“Many enterprises want to get out of the business of managing data centers — without giving up control.”

The challenge: a new product category with no existing ordering flow to reference. Hardware delivery, cloud account linking, infrastructure configuration, and SDDC deployment all needed to work together inside one coherent SaaS experience.

Product Overview Order → Provision → Deploy → Grow
VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts four-phase lifecycle diagram
The four-phase customer lifecycle: order through the VMC portal, AWS provisions and installs the physical hardware on-site (4–6 weeks), customer deploys their SDDC, then grows by adding hosts or additional Outposts.
Hi-Fi Mockup — Product Detail & Learn Page
Hi-fidelity mockup of the VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts product detail page showing hero, technical overview, enterprise grade capabilities, flexible and easy to use, simple and consistent operations, and local proximity consumption sections
The product landing page within the VMware Cloud portal — a customer’s first touchpoint before ordering. Designed to establish credibility, communicate the value proposition across four pillars, and drive to the “Order a VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts” CTA.
02 — Problem & Opportunity

Enterprise customers told us exactly what they needed

After extensive customer interactions, core requirements came into focus. These weren’t abstract user stories — they were concrete pain points from IT operators trying to modernize without compromising compliance, data sovereignty, or the operational skills their teams had spent years building.

03 — Research

Customer interactions that shaped the workflow

Research ran in parallel with early design. I recruited and scheduled sessions with enterprise IT operators using Acuity Scheduling, then synthesized findings in Dovetail and Confluence. Sessions surfaced how customers think about infrastructure procurement, their expectations for a cloud-managed ordering experience, and the gap between self-service and sales-led flows.

Research Operations Customer Session Scheduling — Acuity
Acuity Scheduling calendar showing research session bookings for November 2021
Research sessions booked the week of Nov 1–4, 2021, tracked alongside the Outposts program calendar.
Research Synthesis Documentation — Confluence & Dovetail
Confluence research brief and Dovetail data synthesis
Research briefs in Confluence, with raw notes, tagged highlights, key takeaways, and survey summaries synthesized in Dovetail.
04 — Team Workshop

A north star built in collaboration, not isolation

As product UX lead, I organized a cross-functional workshop on Miro before any screen design began. North star: a seamless E2E experience for customers to order, track, deploy, and consume VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts. Scope focused on the SaaS ordering workflow targeting our GA milestone, with PMs, engineers, UX architect, tech writer, and UI engineers in the room.

Workshop Artifact Miro Board — Full Workshop Overview
Miro board overview showing OAM, use case maps, service blueprint, infrastructure logic, and scope documents
The full Miro workspace: Object Action Models, Outposts data model, use case maps, E2E service blueprint, infrastructure logic diagrams, and scope-of-work — all produced during the workshop.
Workshop Artifact UX Project Scope — E2E Customer Journey
Team Workshop UX Project Scope map showing Learn through Scale phases with JIRA story mapping
The E2E scope map spanning nine lifecycle phases. Order and Deploy were the primary GA focus, with linked JIRA stories (VMCUI-3585 through VMCUI-5956) anchoring the work to sprint delivery.
Workshop Artifact Object Action Models — Order & Deploy Use Cases
Object Action Model diagrams for Order and Deploy VMC on AWS Outposts use cases
Two OAMs produced during the workshop. Pink sticky annotations capture live team decisions — including the critical call on SDDC management CIDR scoping and the AWS account connection handoff between flows.
05 — The Ordering Workflow

Eight steps. One coherent journey.

The ordering workflow was the centrepiece of the GA release. Each step addresses a distinct technical and operational decision — from naming a deployment to committing to a 3-year infrastructure contract.

01
Name your Outposts deployment
Customer assigns a unique identifier that anchors all future references across the portal.
02
Connect your AWS account
A time-bounded CloudFormation template opens in a new tab. Customer creates IAM roles, then returns to confirm the connection — with contextual help for CloudFormation and IAM concepts embedded inline.
03
Select region & availability zone
AZ selection is permanent. A persistent warning and an inline architecture diagram communicate this constraint clearly before the customer commits.
04
Establish a physical site
Create or select an existing site. Details include networking specs, rack requirements, power draw, and address — all used by AWS to schedule the physical site survey and hardware delivery.
05
Select infrastructure capacity
Host instance type and count selection with real-time capacity calculation — sockets, cores, RAM, storage — displayed as the customer adjusts.
06
Configure Outposts connectivity
Public is the default; private connectivity via AWS Direct Connect is an opt-in for customers who need it. The happy path stays frictionless.
07
Set the payment term
3-year term commitment, pay in full. Single clear selection, no ambiguity about what’s being committed to.
08
Review & submit
Full order summary with explicit acknowledgment checkboxes covering billing start, subscription terms, 4–6 week hardware delivery, and support contact.
Hi-Fi Mockup — Order Wizard, Step 3: Region & Availability Zone
Hi-fidelity mockup of the VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts order wizard showing step 3 Region and Availability Zone selection with inline architecture diagram
Step 3 of the 8-step ordering wizard. Completed steps (Name, AWS account) appear collapsed above; remaining steps shown below. The inline AWS region diagram on the right communicates the AZ selection constraint visually, alongside the persistent blue warning banner.
Order: vmc-chicago-1 · ID: 8748-8176f3cd2d32 Status: Order fulfilled
✓
Reviewing
order
✓
Validating
requirements
✓
Processing
order
✓
Install
in-progress
●
Order
fulfilled
○
Deploy
SDDC
Jul 06, 2021 · 03:04 PM UTC
Order submitted
Jul 08, 2021 · 11:14 AM UTC
Requirements validated
Aug 05, 2021 · 09:45 AM UTC
Processing complete
Aug 11, 2021 · 03:45 PM UTC
Hardware fulfilled
Hi-Fi Mockup — Deployment Detail: Order History Tab
Hi-fidelity mockup of the vmc-chicago-1 deployment detail page showing Order History tab with fulfillment timeline and full order summary
The Order History tab on the deployment detail page — the customer’s window into order progress during the 4–6 week hardware delivery window. Five fulfillment milestones with timestamps, the full order summary, and a prominent “Deploy SDDC” CTA that activates once the order is fulfilled. This screen is the bridge between the ordering flow and the deployment flow.
06 — Design Iterations & SDDC Deployment

From fulfilled hardware to running infrastructure

Once the physical hardware was delivered and connected, customers received an email prompt to deploy their SDDC. I designed a 5-step deployment wizard that picks up exactly where the ordering workflow left off — scoped to the specific Outposts instance just installed. The Figma workspace grew to cover the complete journey end-to-end.

Design Artifact Figma Board — Full Prototype & Mockup Workflow
Bird's eye view of the complete Figma prototype workflow
Bird’s-eye view of the Figma tree. Rows: email & org creation, launchpad, Outposts creation flow (green-field), order history, inventory list states, detail pages, VMC subscriptions, SDDC deployment, SDDC details, post-deployment inventory and subscriptions.
Hi-Fi Mockup — SDDC Summary Dashboard (Post-Deployment)
Hi-fidelity mockup of the outposts-chicago-SDDC summary dashboard showing capacity and usage gauges for CPU, memory and storage across 2 clusters and 6 hosts, plus infrastructure table linking back to the Outposts deployment
The deployed SDDC summary view — the end state of the full ordering and deployment journey. Shows capacity and usage gauges (CPU 42%, Memory 14%, Storage 21%) across two clusters, per-cluster details with VMware Tanzu and Elastic DRS status, and an Infrastructure table that links back to the parent vmc-chicago-1 Outposts deployment. The “Open vCenter” and “Actions” controls surface next-step operations for the IT operator.
Design Challenge

Two flows separated by 4–6 weeks

Ordering and deployment are split by the physical hardware delivery window. The design maintains continuity through email milestones, the Order History tab, and persistent status indicators — so customers never feel like they’re starting over after a month-long gap.

Design Decision

Progressive disclosure on site details

Site networking specs are shown via a “See site details” toggle rather than a separate screen — keeping the ordering flow clean while giving advanced users immediate access to the technical data they need before committing.

Design Decision

Real-time capacity calculation

As customers adjust host count, total capacity recalculates in real time. This prevents over- or under-provisioning on a multi-year infrastructure commitment with no easy rollback.

Design Challenge

Keeping non-experts unblocked

CloudFormation, IAM roles, CIDR ranges, VPC/subnet selection — all deeply technical. Contextual help links written with the tech writer were embedded directly into the relevant steps to keep experts moving fast without stranding less technical operators.

07 — My Contribution

Owned the design from discovery to delivery

🔭
Research & Discovery
Competitive analysis, customer session scheduling, synthesis via Dovetail and Confluence
📝
Workshop Facilitation
Led cross-functional Miro workshop; produced personas, use-case maps, OAMs, and E2E service blueprint
✎
UX Design
Sketches, flows, wires across multiple Figma cycles for ordering wizard and SDDC deployment flow
💻
Prototype & Hi-Fi
Hi-fidelity comps, clickable prototype, email communications, inventory and detail views, subscriptions page
E2E
Full end-to-end coverage — from account creation email through order tracking to SDDC deployment and running infrastructure
GA
Shipped to General Availability as the ordering experience for a jointly engineered VMware + AWS enterprise on-premises product
↗
Continued post-GA: team iterated on customer feedback and expanded the product experience through follow-on cycles
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